Oct 012013
 

I’ll admit to being guilty of making this joke. You know, somebody questions why things work or function a certain way, and then there’s that snarky little line, “you’re hunting logic”. It seems hilarious, until you realize just what you’re pointing out. Namely, “Yes, this is stupid, and yes this doesn’t make any sort of discernible sense, but we’re going to keep doing it anyways.” Not so funny now is it? Being told that “you’re hunting logic” is basically an admission that you’re right, but that nobody wants to take on the hordes of people who put things into this situation.  Anything that leads to a “you’re hunting logic” is obviously non-intuitive and confusing. That’s not to say that non-intuitive is automatically wrong, but if no matter how often and who you ask there’s no good explanation for why things are the way they are, the way things are is wrong. There should always be an understandable, logical reason for why things are being done the  way they are. Even if you don’t happen to agree with said logic, it should still be there and recognizable. Because it’s not intuitive, people aren’t going to instinctively go for it, and because there’s no logic to it, people aren’t going to remember why they should do whatever it is they were supposed to be doing, nor are they going to feel particularly motivated to try.

All of this is an invitation for avoidable problems. There’s a reason people strive to make things intuitive, it’s because the more instinctive something is, the more likely someone is to do it. If you’re asking them to do something that isn’t instinctive, there should at least be an easily rememberable (at least easily discoverable) reason why so that way they can feel good about going against their natural inclinations, or bear the need to do so in mind in the first place. Put simply, the more people try to “hunt logic” in whatever system you have them in, the less likely they are to go along with it and the more likely they are to just whatever they happen to feel like doing.

A simple truth of human psychology is that everything that anyone does they do for a reason that makes sense for them. There’s a logic behind every screwy thing out there, the problem is the more people have to hunt for logic, the more they’re going to want to scuttle whatever system they’re dealing with and replace it. If the reason for why things are they way they are require that much work to uncover, it’s time to change the way things are. Maybe it was a great idea at the time, but times change and people need to adapt.

Any time you’re stuck in a situation where you’re “hunting logic”, it’s safe to assume that you’re probably right. The reality is things should never deteriorate to the point where you have to hunt for logic. If they do, that’s your first indication that you need to change things to bring an easier-to-discover logic to the whole situation.

 Posted by at 1:28 AM